Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war.
In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the bloodiest-ever Gaza war, Palestinian militants are set to release 50 women and children kidnapped during their deadly October 7 raids into southern Israel.
“We are very happy that a partial release is pending,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum group said in a statement. “As of now, we don’t know exactly who will be released when.”
After weeks of Qatar-brokered negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet approved the truce accord at the end of an almost all-night meeting, with the premier telling ministers this was a “difficult decision but it’s a right decision”.
The cabinet’s sign-off was one of the last stumbling blocks after what one US official described as five “extremely excruciating” weeks of talks.
Hamas welcomed the “humanitarian truce” and said it would see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails.
“The resistance is committed to the truce as long as the occupation honours it,” a Hamas official told AFP.
The war started after Hamas gunmen on October 7 launched the worst attack in Israel’s history that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government.
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups also took an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, among them elderly people and young children.
Israel declared war on Hamas, vowing to bring the hostages home and to destroy the militant group.
It launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas government, has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children.
Israel said that to facilitate the hostage release it would initiate a four-day “pause” in its air, land and sea assault of Gaza, while it stressed that the agreement did not spell the end of the war.For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra day’s “pause”, the Israeli government said.
